A DRM Driver Appears For The i.MX51/53 SoCs IPU

A new open-source DRM graphics driver has appeared in the embedded space. Sascha Hauer with Pengutronix has released the initial DRM base driver for the i.MX IPUv3 as found in the i.MX51 and i.MX53 SoCs. This driver supports the SoC units necessary for frame-buffer support.

The FreeScale i.MX51 and i.MX53 are used in a few different devices, running Android and MeeGo commonly. These just-published DRM patches provide support for the display controller, display interface, display multi-FIFO controller display processor, and image DMA controller. The code is based upon one of FreeScale's drivers while re-working how sub-units and resource management is handled. Missing from the IPU's support in this driver is the CMOS sensor interface, video de-interlacer, sensor multi-FIFO controller, image converter, and image rotator. But they may be added to the driver based upon comments by Sascha.

The beginning of the patch set that was dropped on Friday can be found on the DRI mailing list. This work comes just a month after Sascha published a KMS driver for the same hardware.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the web-site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience and being the largest web-site devoted to Linux hardware reviews, particularly for products relevant to Linux gamers and enthusiasts but also commonly reviewing servers/workstations and embedded Linux devices. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics hardware drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated testing software. He can be followed via Twitter and Google+ or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.